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June 9, 2006

Fantasy Focus

Down the Line

by Erik Siegrist

Coming into 2006, perhaps the most risky elite pick in fantasy baseball was Alfonso Soriano. Much was made of his 2005 home/road splits (1011 OPS at home in Texas, 639 away) and the fact that he was moving from a great hitter’s park in Ameriquest Field to a great pitcher's park in RFK Stadium. Jose Guillen’s own initial struggles with RFK (just three home runs there last year, as opposed to 21 on the road) were cited as corroborating evidence. In addition, Nationals GM Jim Bowden mentioned his immediate intention to move Soriano off of the keystone and out to left field, a decision that clearly displeased the second baseman. Add to that an arbitration battle the player lost, and the door was opened for a potentially sulky Soriano to underperform even beyond the unfavorable park factors as he tried to force another trade. PECOTA’s median projection was a .258/.311/.465 line with 24 home runs; ours at Rotowire was similar, pegging him at .262/.308/.444 with 23 home runs.

It’s now over a third of the way through the season, and those predictions of doom and gloom have been proven premature by Soriano. Through 60 games he’s hitting .307/.360/.623. All would be career highs for him, and he already has 22 home runs, giving him a chance to beat PECOTA’s 90th percentile projection of 30 by the All-Star break. More importantly, he’s showing no negative impact at all from playing in RFK. Not only have half his home runs come at home, his rate stats are actually better at RFK than on the road, and by a large amount (.319/.386/.736, versus .304/.348/.561).

The obvious question is, has RFK suddenly switched its bias? The surface evidence says no:

• Soriano has hit 11 home runs at home, but the rest of the team combined has just 14;
• Nick Johnson, the most successful National at home in 2005 (.297/.415/.497, seven home runs in 195 AB) is hitting .295/.409/.538 with five home runs in 78 AB this year;
• Brian Schneider, the only other semi-healthy regular from last year, is hitting .220/.283/.293 in 41 AB this season after a .225/.304/.347 line in 173 RFK ABs last year.

Those are painfully small samples, though. On a larger level, RFK surrendered 1.38 HR/game last year; in 2006, players not named Soriano have hit out 30 home runs in 23 games, a rate of 1.30. By comparison, Nationals road contests saw 1.79 HR/game in 2005, and have seen 2.19/game in 2006 even with Soriano removed from the equation. There’s still a lot of time for the trends to change, but so far Soriano seems almost unique in his ability to conquer RFK.

I say almost, because there is one hitter who has done as well in RFK as Soriano is doing now, albeit in an even tinier handful of plate appearances—Andruw Jones has cranked five home runs in just 37 at bats in Washington over the last eight months of regular season baseball. Perhaps not coincidentally, Jones profiles as a very similar hitter to Soriano at the plate. Both are right-handed flyball pull hitters, and it’s that ability to pull the ball down the line, rather than into RFK’s spacious gaps and towards its distant center field fence, that might just be the key to their performances, and their power in a park that is otherwise a power killer.